Peter of Poitiers' Compendium historiae: a research platform and edition

The first edition of Peter of Poitiers' Compendium historiae was created by an international and interdisciplinary project team (University of Tübingen, University of Wuppertal, University of Graz, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, University of London) bringing together researchers from the fields of art history, mediaeval history, Latin philology, text editing, and digital humanities. The research platform provides access to the tradition of the Compendium historiae, one of the most visually innovative and influential works of the Middle Ages. It contains a codicological database, a navigable visualisation of the graphic metastructure, a critical edition of the text, and other materials regarding individual case studies of manuscript witnesses, socio-cultural context, and other aspects of the tradition. Digital and freely accessible, the scholarly edition allows the user to navigate not only the visual and textual dimensions of the work, but also to explore the dynamic transmission of the Compendium historiae in its graphic variance. The edition has two major parts: the Visual Edition, focusing on visual variances in twelve selected manuscripts, and the Textual Edition, providing a critical study of the text of the earlier manuscript witnesses. The superstructure provides the backbone of the edition. Constituting a maximalist model of the work, it consists of unique identifiers and labels for each node, connecting line, text block, diagram, and pictorial element found in the manuscript witnesses. The project "History as a visual concept: Peter of Poitiers' Compendium historiae" was generously funded by the DFG (504265959) and FWF (I 6133, Grant-DOI:10.55776/I6133), under the Weave European funding scheme, running from 2023 to 2026.